This invention relates to features on a surface of a component in which the surface of the component is brought into contact with another surface under clamping pressure or load.
Components are frequently connected to one another by bolts or other fasteners. As one example, a bearing cap may be mounted, connected, or otherwise attached to a mating component in order to capture a bearing element between a pair of semi-circular surfaces found on the bearing cap and the mating component, respectively. Typically, the bearing cap is attached to the mating component by passing bolts through two legs of the bearing cap in which the two legs straddle the semi-circular area into which the bearing element is received. Upon the tightening of these bolts, the bearing element is captured between the bearing cap and the mating element.
In this example, in order to properly balance the stresses during attachment, it is often necessary to carefully control the manner in which the bolts are tightened down. If the bolt on one of the sides is tightened down too tightly before the bolt on the other side is sufficiently tightened down, then it is possible that the bearing element received between the bearing cap and the mating element may be subjected to an uneven stress around its circumference and this uneven stress could force the bearing out of a round shape. Because the bearings element are precision components, even modest deformation out of a round shape can be potentially harmful to the bearing elements and render the bearing element less efficient or non-operational.
Additionally, uneven tightening of the bolts during assembly of the two mating components can also result in cracking or fracture of the bearing cap. If the bolts are not evenly tightened down during assembly, then the bearing cap may be subjected to differential stresses in the legs of the bearing cap in such a way that the bearing cap was not engineered to withstand.
Accordingly, it has become conventional for the two bolts to be tightened down simultaneously during assembly in such a way as to inhibit the development of differential stresses across the legs. However, such simultaneous tightening can be complex to implement and, if not performed correctly, can still result in the application of uneven stresses that can damage the components being assembled.
Thus, a need remains for improved ways of joining multiple components to one another while avoiding many of the problems created when differential stresses are induced during the assembly process.